Page 79 of Talk to Me
Locke and McQuade had studied this route both when they put the SUV in place and after. It was heavily wooded and they’d done markers—probably smart—to know where the path turned and twisted. The last thing we needed was to slam into a tree.
“Hospital?” Locke said over his shoulder as we cleared the last bit of trees and he turned onto an actual road. It was empty, and he didn’t bother with the headlights yet.
Smart.
“Yes,” I said. We needed to find the other tracker. The scanner hadn’t picked it up which meant it could be deep. The number of injuries she’d had—we hadn’t really had the time to get her a proper check up with an actual doctor.
Time to change that as well.
“Got it.”
The drive to the hospital took us the better part of an hour. Locke moved along the backroads until we were closer to a bigger city, then he switched to the highways.
The hospital he was heading for was one of the largest in the area. The campus included more than 3.1 million square feet of space, six buildings, and multiple specialties including a Level 1 trauma center.
We’d identified every single one within a driving radius of our planned stops. Overkill to some, perhaps, but I happened to agree with Patch. The only bad plan is the one we didn’t make.
“We’re close,” Locke said. The drive had been almost too quiet, but hopefully McQuade hadn’t left anyone to follow us.
I nodded and stroked a hand over her shoulder. She gave the barest of starts. Had she gone to sleep?
She stirred under the blanket and I drew it back and found her tilting her head to blink up at me sleepily. “I fell asleep.”
Surprise rippled over her expression as she smothered a yawn. She froze in the act of sitting up.
“It’s fine,” I told her. “We can take the helmet off now.”
“Grab a jacket for her from the back,” Locke said. “I’m dropping you here, it’s not the main entrance, easier to get around and avoid the ER.”
Solid plan. I had the basic layout, and we needed to head down to radiology, which the sign said was in this building.
I took the helmet from her and then held up the jacket so she could slide into it. The ground was mostly dry, and if I picked her up, it was going to limit my aim.
Still, she wasn’t walking over the uneven ground. I spotted a wheelchair near the doors.
That would do.
Five minutes later, I settled her in the chair then put the blanket over her lap. She shot me a worried look as she glanced around.
“Hospitals have a lot of cameras.”
“They do,” I told her. “Mostly on doors, and medicine cabinets and outside rooms. Some run on cycles, others have human observation. This is a risk, but one we’re going to have to accept because you were tracked.”
I had no problem lining the halls with bodies if it came down to it. But we needed to find the tracker and we needed to find it now.
“I trust you,” she said and the soft words pulled everything into sharp focus. We hadn’t really had time to talk before we’d been so rudely interrupted.
The fact she said she trusted me. Trusted us presumably, but me specifically? I absolutely refused to let anything rock that.
“Relax then, let me do all the work.” I gripped the chair and guided it down the hall. If the plans we’d reviewed were to be believed…
There it was. A locker room. The door wasn’t locked. I pulled her into the room with me. It took me about two minutes to find a pair of scrubs in the clean laundry stack at the back of the room. I grabbed a set for me, then eyed Patch to pick out a size for her.
She might appreciate something else to wear.
“Watch the door,” I told her as I stripped out of the clothes I’d worn and changed into the scrubs. Eight minutes after we entered the hospital, I headed down the hall. I’d acquired a chart from one of the desks and added some blank sheets to it.
“Know anything about doctor’s paperwork?”