"Okay," I said aloud. "I need all the details. Where's he at, and what's the best way to get there without anybody seeing me along the way. Also, who's with him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Come on. He's obviously not going to just walk out the front door. There must be somebody picking him up. Unless he's taking a taxi or something."

"You didn't see it?" Perry flicked away the cigarette b.u.t.t. "On the service road, other side of the parking lot."

"I didn't come that way." I pointed to the street's brighter lights. "After I talked to Mason, I came straight over here."

"Huh." Under the gray overalls, his shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Thought maybe you'd scope out the scene a little bit. You know, see what was going on around here."

"Good thing I didn't. If I'd done major reconnaissance, this guy would've been gone already. So tell me, what is it you think I should've seen?"

"Guy's got a whole crew." Perry nodded toward the darkness past the other side of the hospital parking lot. "Least half a dozen."

c.r.a.p. This Plan B was growing more complicated by the minute.

"Are they inside?" I pointed with my thumb to the hospital building behind us. "With him?"

"No " Perry shook his head. "Not the last time I checked. He got himself moved into a private room "

"Private?"

"Money talks." This time, he gave an appreciative nod. "Guy's got some major bucks. Enough to get whatever he wants. Let's just say he's not exactly a charity patient, if you get what I mean."

"Yeah, I do." I looked up the side of the building, wondering if one of the lit windows was his. "So what's he doing in this private room?"

"Making phone calls least I think so." Perry shrugged. "I only got a little peek in there. He's got one of those . . . what d'ya call 'em . . . flat things . . ."

"Tablet?"

"Yeah but not a big one. Little one handheld."

Must've been something he'd had on him, when he'd been brought into the emergency room. Maybe in some kind of high-impact protective case if I'd had my phone in one of those, it might still be working, and I wouldn't have to use the c.r.a.ppy little burner that Mason had laid on me.

"Okay." In my head, I started sorting out my possible moves. "So he's up there, by himself. But you said he's got a team here? What're they doing?'

"I told you they're over on the service. They're unloading a car. You know those long trailers that race cars get moved around in? Like that."

More stuff I was familiar with, from my brother Donnie's NASCAR fascination.

"What kind of car?"

"Muscle car. You know, something with a big displacement engine "

"I know what a muscle car is, thank you." I took a guess. "It wouldn't have been a Dodge Challenger, would it? Like a new one?"

"You know . . . I think you're right. In the can, there's always a lot of car magazines floating around. Road & Track, that sort of thing. They're like p.o.r.n when you're locked up. That must've been where I saw one before."

d.a.m.n this guy in the hospital, whoever he was, had a serious car predilection. Two Challengers? Just so he could have one as a backup? He wipes one out, and all he has to do is call his pit crew for them to bring the second one out. Kind of stylish, I suppose, in a testosterone-ridden way but we're also talking serious money here. Guys with that kind of bankroll didn't usually go chasing down people themselves. At least, not in my experience. They hired people to do the dirty work. For this guy to get into the action himself something deep and weird was going on.

There wasn't time now to figure out what it was, though. Muscle cars, pit crews, money whatever the deal was with this guy, Plan B still was to make sure that he wasn't going to be coming after me.

"So the whole crew's over there right now? On the service road?"

"Yeah." Another nod from Perry. "I snuck over there and took a look at 'em, just before you showed up. They had the hood up on the car, and they were working on the engine."

Great if I didn't take out this guy, he'd have a completely tuned and tweaked ride, to come racing after me. My guess was that meant he was serious.

I had Perry give me the key code for the hospital's stairway doors. Taking that way, it'd be easier getting up to the fifth floor without being seen than if I used any of the elevators.

"Wait a minute " A thought suddenly struck me. "What about the security cameras? Place like this must be full of them." Last thing I wanted was for my face to be captured on some hard drive.

"You're in luck," said Perry. "They're all dead." He pointed to a spot beyond me.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw a camera mounted to the wall, just inside the loading dock's gate. The little red dot underneath the lens was dark.

"You're sure?"

"Yep." Perry nodded. "I looked inside the guard office. All the monitor screens are blank. Dead as a mackerel."

That was convenient for me, but weirdly so. Maybe it had something to do with the Challenger guy he might've paid to have all the gear switched off so there'd be less record of whatever he got up to while he was here at the hospital. Didn't really matter, I supposed, as long as it worked in my favor.

"Anything else I need to know?" I wanted to get going and take care of this job, before the crew on the service road finished up and brought the second Challenger around to the front of the building.

"Don't know how useful it is for ya " Perry b.u.t.toned the flap over the pack of cigarettes in his coverall breast pocket. "But his name's Stinson."

"How do you know that?"

"Heard him say it. When I stuck my head in his room, and he was answering his phone. Or tablet, or whatever it is. He said, Yeah, this is Stinson." Perry shrugged. "So it's his name. That's all."

It didn't ring any bells with me.

But something else did. All of a sudden, a lot of things became clear, that had been ticking away at the back of my mind.

"All right." I dug into my jacket pocket and held up the burner phone. "You've got this number, don't you?"

He nodded.

"I need you to sneak back out there to the service road and check on how those guys are coming along on that car."

A frown. "Why?"

"I didn't say I needed questions, did I?" The phone slid back into my pocket. "This is my job, and I'll do it the way I want, okay? I'll be heading upstairs, so as soon as you've got an idea about how long before they bring the car around to the front door, ring me. That's all I'm asking you to do."

"Whatever." He shifted the wooden handle from his shoulder, leaving the mop sitting in the wheeled bucket. I watched as he jumped down from the edge of the loading dock, then headed out into the dark.

Soon as he was out of sight, I got to work. I still had the plastic bag, wadded up and tucked inside my jacket, in which Mason had brought the new helmet to me. I pulled it out and gave it a quick once-over it'd be fine, for what I needed it to do . . .

Less than a minute later, with my preparations all in place, I was in the hospital stairwell, heading up to the fifth floor.

NINE.

Hospitals are just like any other place where people come and go. There's an invisibility principle at work if you walk fast, don't look around, and act like you're supposed to be there, most of the time people don't even see you. Okay, sure, if you strolled into an operating room while the surgeons were slicing somebody open, and if you didn't have scrubs and a mask on, then they probably would notice you. But a regular open corridor, lined with private rooms with numbers on the door and those plastic bins where the nurses tuck the patients' charts? No big deal. Plus, I've still got that anonymous Asian female thing going for me it's never really worn off, no matter how much grim stuff I've done. People look at me, if they see me at all, and they just naturally a.s.sume I'm harmless. Which is, of course, a mistake.

I slid right past the nurse station, near the elevators and the stairwell doorway farther down the corridor. The woman behind the counter didn't even glance up from the computer screen in front of her. There were a couple white-coated men over on the other side, talking and laughing, and they ignored me as well.

This Stinson guy's money had bought him a lot of privacy, or as much as you can get in a place like this. His room, the number that Perry had told me, was all the way down at the end. The half dozen or so rooms before it didn't appear to have anyone in them a couple of the doors were open, and I didn't see anyone in the beds inside, and none of the doors had charts or any other kind of paperwork in their bins.

When I got to the one I was looking for, I looked back down to the nurse's station. No one was watching me. Which suited me fine. I turned the handle, pushed the door open, and slid inside.

For a moment, it seemed like I'd gotten the wrong room. It was empty with the lights switched off, there was no sign of anybody having been in it all, or at least not recently. The folding screen was pushed all the way back, the bed linens tucked and smoothed with the usual military-like precision. Still standing at the doorway, I leaned farther in and scanned around. The toilet door was open, so I could see that n.o.body was in there, either. No bag, no jacket, no tablet left on one of the chairs nothing.

I wasn't surprised at all. I'd pretty much been expecting this.

And I wasn't surprised by what happened next, either.

"Glad you could make it "

The voice spoke with a sneer that exactly suited the guy I'd come looking for. I turned my head and caught a forearm blow right across my face. Hard enough to send me flying across the room.

I raised myself on my elbows and looked up at Stinson. His chin rested on the top edge of the neck brace the doctors had clamped onto him. The left side of his face was bruised purple, and a row of black st.i.tches ran across one eyebrow. A cold half-smile twisted one corner of his mouth as he closed the door behind him. Trapping me here like this, he seemed even crazier and scarier than when I'd seen him on the freeway behind the wheel of that souped-up Challenger.

He didn't waste any time gloating, though. Squatting down beside me on the floor, he gave me a quick, thorough pat down. The metal edge of the finger splint on his hand slid over my ribs. He pulled open my jacket, reaching all the way around me to the small of my back, then down to my ankles, where I might have had a smaller piece strapped.

"You came up here without a gun?" His sneer turned to a puzzled frown. "What, you thought we were just going to have a little chat or something?"

"I . . ." It wasn't hard me for me to act as though I were still stunned from the blow he'd laid on me. "I must've . . . lost it . . ."

"Kinda careless of you." Stinson shook his head in disgust as he stood back up. He gave me a prodding kick in the ribs. "I thought I was dealing with a professional. That's what I was told, at least."

"Who . . ." I let my voice go small and weak. "Who told you that?"

"Dalby who else?" Another shake of the head. "You know, you're really not meeting my expectations. I don't know why he hired you this is too f.u.c.kin' easy."

I pushed myself a couple inches back from him. "You didn't think so . . . when we were on the freeway . . ."

That stung him. "That's because you were able to get away from me." His black, ugly scowl returned. "And you're not getting away now."

Another kick, this one harder and to my shoulder, rolled me onto one side. Stinson already had unsnapped the backpack's waist strap when he'd been searching me for weapons and not finding any. So now all he had to do was grab one of the backpack straps and yank upward with it. That lifted me from the floor for a moment, then I fell back down when it came free.

He did something with the backpack that did take me by surprise. He didn't even try to open it and remove whatever was inside instead, I watched as he took the backpack and clamped it tight to the side of his abdomen, right above his left kidney.

"What the h.e.l.l . . ." A couple of seconds pa.s.sed, with him squeezing the backpack even closer to himself. If that was supposed to make something happen it didn't. "There was supposed to be . . . like a beep or something . . ." He sounded childishly baffled as he looked down at the backpack. "When the trigger got hit . . ."

I didn't say anything, but just tried to scoot as far away from him as I could. My back came up against one of the corners of the room's bed.

Now he took the bag away from his side and looked more closely at it. "Wait a minute " He grabbed the zipper tag and pulled it a couple of inches, opening up the bag. "This is supposed to be sealed." Seizing both sides of the gap, he yanked them all the way apart when he turned the bag upside down, a clean shirt and a couple pairs of my underpants spilled out, along with my deodorant and a travel-size plastic bottle of shampoo, and one leg of a rolled-up pair of fresh jeans. "This isn't the right bag . . ."

"Well, duh . . ." I couldn't resist, as I looked up into his thunderstruck expression. "Like . . . I was going to bring that up here "

He dropped the bag to the floor. If I hadn't pushed myself into a sitting position against the bed, his fist wouldn't have connected with my head. But it did, swinging in a downward arc as he tossed the emptied backpack aside. The blow connected, and I went sprawling onto my shoulder, away from the room's windows and toward the door.

Now I didn't have to pretend to be dazed. The room tilted around me, as an unfocused wash rolled past my vision. I could hear, somewhere on the other side of it, Stinson shouting into a cell phone.

"Perry " His voice lowered to a growl. "I don't know what you're trying to pull, but you better get your a.s.s up here. Now "

It was less than a minute before Perry showed up at the room door. He already had been heading up here, when his phone had gone off.

He didn't bother to knock, but just pushed the door open, leaving the mop and wheeled bucket just outside.

Which was something I'd been counting on. Like he'd told me, he didn't go anywhere in the hospital without his janitor gear.

"What're you trying to pull?" Stinson's anger was boiling so fiercely, it looked as though his blood-reddened face was about to explode. "This b.i.t.c.h doesn't have it "

"Hey, man keep it down." Perry pointed to the hallway outside the room. "They're gonna hear "

"I don't care! I made a deal with you and your buddy Mason, or whatever the f.u.c.k his name is. And I'm not seeing what I want here." He leaned down and scooped up the empty pack by one of its straps and threw it into Perry's chest. "This c.r.a.p isn't it!"

They weren't paying any attention to me. I was able to crawl a couple of feet past Perry's legs and reach out past the doorway.

"What do you mean, that's not it?" The backpack lay at the toes of Perry's scuffed work shoes. "That's what she had. That's what she brought with her "

I grabbed the rim of the wheeled bucket and pulled. It tipped over, the mop handle clattering on the floor. Both of the men looked around at me as the gray water sloshed onto their ankles.

"No "

I reached into the bucket, lying on its side, and grabbed the heavy, hand-filling item wrapped up in the plastic bag. I didn't undo the knot, but just ripped the bag open. The next thing these guys knew, they were staring into the muzzle of a .357, its grip clasped in both my damp hands.

"This is what I brought with me."

It didn't matter that I could hear somebody running in the hallway probably one of the hospital security guards coming toward us. The look on Stinson's face was worth whatever happened next. I squeezed the gun's trigger, letting a shot rip straight toward him.

Once his initial surprise was over, his reactions were pretty good. He dived, the shot going above where he'd been standing and shattering one of the blank gauges on the vital signs monitors mounted to the wall.

"Oh." Perry stared blankly at me. "You knew "

"That you were setting me up? Pretty much." That was why I'd used his mop bucket to smuggle the gun up to the room. I'd figured out that he and this Stinson guy were in on this together, and that Stinson would be all prepared and waiting for me to show up. "Now get over there." I gestured with the gun. "If I don't see your hands on top of your head, you're in big trouble "

"What's going on here?"

That was the hospital guard, right outside the door. Stinson hadn't bought so much privacy that this kind of action could be ignored.