Camouflage Cowboy

“What’s going on?” Nolan asked from next to him as he stared out of the window three floors above the myriad of cars.

“I should have said something, but when we arrived, I had the feeling we were being watched.” Nick put his focus on a man jogging through the lot wearing blue scrubs and a tan jacket with the hood pulled up. “There.”

“I’ll be damned,” Harlan said. “We passed him getting into the elevator when we got off.” Harlan banged his fist against the ledge in frustration. “I barely got a look at him with his head down.”

They watched the man disappear into a bank of trees and shrubs on the outer perimeter of the parking lot. There wasn’t a chance they could catch him at this point.

“We better hope Trevor Lewis survives, because he’s our only link right now.” Nolan pushed away from the window, but Nick and Harlan remained, picking out each car that moved from its space on the tree-lined street beyond the hospital entrance.

“Red compact…Ford Focus. Dark-gray SUV…Tahoe. Black pickup…Dodge.” Nick called out the vehicles. “White…pickup…Dodge.” Anyone in a hurry to clear the area would be long gone by now, but odds were if he’d driven away from the scene in the past ten minutes they’d have a make on what he drove.

Harlan wrote the last vehicle description down on the small notepad he held in his hand. “It’s a long shot, but I’ll see if Sheriff Hale will plug the makes and models into the system. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“We don’t even know if the guy drove a car. He could have been on foot the entire time, could have been standing in this very window when we arrived and timed his escape accordingly. I’m going to check and see if the hospital security cameras caught a visual of his face at some point.”

Harlan nodded. “I can tell you he was tall…six foot, give or take an inch. Powerful build. I’ll see if any hits on the autos produce an owner who matches his physical description.”

“Let’s hope we catch a break.” Nick glanced down the corridor at the empty chair next to the entrance of Trevor Lewis’s room and realized he hadn’t seen Matteo. “Where’s Matt?”

“He wasn’t here when Nolan and I arrived. The charge nurse said she saw him head for the vending room to grab a soda.”

“That takes what, three minutes? He should be back by now. Let’s have a look.”

Together, he and Harlan hustled along the hallway, focused on the vending-machine cubical on the right at the end of the corridor, marked by an information sign hanging above the entrance.

He had a bad feeling about this. First Trevor Lewis; now Matteo? What the hell was going on?

Nick slowed his pace, raised his right hand and motioned Harlan to the other side of the entrance before he sucked up next to the door frame and glanced inside.

The small room was empty except for a row of soda and snack machines ablaze in fluorescent light.

“Nothing,” Harlan said, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know how, but he must have gotten past us.”

Relaxing his stance, Nick stepped through the entrance and surveyed the room for hidden nooks and crannies, still unable to shake the worry surging in his veins. Where was Matteo Soarez? He’d never leave his post.

Frustrated, Nick pulled out his cell phone and dialed Matt’s number.

Over the drone of the machines, he swore he heard a muffled ringtone. “Do you hear that, Harlan?”

Harlan stopped in his tracks. “Yeah.”

“Where’s it coming from?” A wave of desperation floated Nick along the bank of vending machines as he listened to the familiar ringtone grow louder. At the end of the processional, a cooler filled with premade sandwiches stood silent and dark. Unplugged?

In an instant, reality jolted through Nick on the heels of one last ringtone before a beep signaled one missed call.

“Damn,” he whispered as he stared into the corner between the cooler and the wall. Into the narrow gap where Matteo Soarez was crushed against the wall with a black hood over his head.

“It’s Matt! Help me move this!” Nick and Harlan worked in unison, holding on to the cumbersome machine, pulling and rocking it until the space opened several inches.

Nick reached in and snagged Matt’s limp arm where it hung at his side.

“Matt, buddy. Can you hear me?”

Matteo groaned.

A good sign in Nick’s mind. “We’re going to get you out of there. Hold on.”

Harlan jockeyed the cooler case, opening the crack another inch, just enough that Nick felt Matt’s body give in the tight space.

“That’s it! A little more.” Inch by inch, he dragged Matteo out of the crevice and lowered him to the floor.

Fingering the knot of cord that held the bag in place over Matt’s head, Nick prayed that it hadn’t also strangled his buddy in the process. How long had he been pinned? How long had he been deprived of oxygen?

The knot came free and together he and Harlan pulled the bag off Matteo’s head. He blinked against the overhead lights and mumbled underneath the strip of duct tape over his mouth.

Peeling up an edge, Nick stripped the tape off. Matteo let out a stream of profanity that echoed against the walls of the cubical. “Are you okay?” Nick asked, staring at the blazing red mark around Matt’s mouth and the taser burn on his neck.

“I’ll live.”

“What happened?” Harlan rocked back onto the floor.

“Somebody jumped me from behind.” Matt sucked in three gulps of air in a row and sat up. “Got me with a Taser, shoved me into the corner and proceeded to squash me like a grape.”

“Did you get a look at him?” Nick rose to his feet; Harlan followed. Bending down, they each put an arm around Matteo and helped him stand.

“No. It happened too damn fast. One minute my soda was dropping, the next it was me. I did get one punch in, but it felt like I’d slugged an oak.”

“Big guy, huh?” Speculation laced through Nick’s mind. The description of a powerful perpetrator coincided with Harlan’s description of the man he’d seen getting into the elevator. “Could be the guy we saw running across the parking lot.”

Together they helped Matteo out into the corridor.

“I’ve got this,” Matt said as he got his legs working and shrugged off their help. “What’s up with Lewis?” He nodded toward the commotion down the hall.

“Coded half an hour ago. They’re working to save his life right now.” Nick spotted Nolan gesturing in their direction. “Come on. Maybe they’ve revived him.”

They walked back down the corridor and stopped next to Nolan in the doorway of Trevor Lewis’s room. He looked up and shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line.

From inside, behind a privacy curtain, Nick clearly heard a male voice above the hum of a heart monitor and the whoosh of air being forced into Trevor Lewis’s lungs through a bag valve mask.

“Stop CPR. Check the monitor.”

“Still a flat line, Dr. Karnahan.”

“I’m going to call it. Time of death, 5:41 p.m.”

Chapter Three

Nick fidgeted in his chair as he glanced around the conference table at the CSaI team members: Nolan Law, Parker McKenna, Matteo Soarez, Wade Coltrane and Harlan McClain. They were all officially in battle mode after the events at Holy Cross Hospital, and their motto—For Country; For Brotherhood; For Love—never rang more true. Too bad their boss and mentor, Bart Bellows, was out sick, battling a persistent case of bronchitis.