Page 62 of Charmed Forces
“A janitor would have been a better identity,” I decided. “They can walk all over the place without arousing the slightest suspicion.”
“I agree,” said Lily who started eating my slice of cake. “No one would ask a janitor to do anything that would immediately ‘out’ them, like ‘starting a line’ whatever that means, or, or, or, you know, medicalstuff.A janitor can just walk around, carrying all kinds of things and no one would ever ask them what they’re doing. They would just assume someone ordered it.”
“You’re right,” I said with a shake of my head. “I just opened the door for her without even thinking about it. Lucas, where’d she go next? Did she drive away?”
“She did. I tracked the car to the train station,” he said, tapping more keys. “She parks up on a side street, gets out and walks around to the corner and goes into the shop. She comes out a moment later with a small bag and returns to the car. Then the car leaves. I pick it up again a few blocks north, heading towards the highway. We see it one last time joining the highway, still heading north.”
“She’s not coming back, is she?” asked Lily.
“I don’t think so. I figure she’ll ditch the car sometime today, probably when it gets low on gas. It’s possible she has another vehicle stashed that she already intended to switch to. I’m still searching but it’s a huge area and I’m not confident I’ll be able to find her. Sorry.”
I couldn’t recall a time Lucas had to admit defeat and to hear it now was jarring. “From her knowledge of picking the right victim to steal from, I’d say she had a plan in advance or must’ve gotten some help putting it together,” I said. “She can’t have known there would be a survivor or that she’d need to go to the hospital in advance, so perhaps there was someone helping her here?”
“Someone who’s keeping an eye on the hospital nurses?” asked Lily. “Randomly?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound very likely,” I said. “There’re too many and they’re spread over too large an area. So… coincidence? This killer was just passing and saw the parking pass in the car window? Or someone boosted it on her behalf?”
“It’s possible she was looking for a vehicle to use and the parking pass sealed the deal by getting her closer and making her escape potentially easier. I don’t imagine she anticipated exiting the hospital the way she did,” said Lucas, his eyes wider.
“She just got up and ran off,” I said, still incredulous at her amazing escape. “I think I would have just lay there and played dead.” Next to me, Lily snorted a laugh.
“I got thinking about another detail,” continued Lucas. “Assuming she was hired for the job the previous evening, once Detective Wayne was known to have survived, she must have been near enough to the area to take the job. She probably had plenty of time to steal the nurse’s vehicle and set up her exit to get out of town.”
“A local hitwoman is very disconcerting,” said Lily and I nodded in agreement.
“Could she have been the backup woman in case anything went wrong?” I wondered. “That would explain why she was already here although it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Whoever orchestrated the hits would have had to anticipate failure so this doesn’t exactly reek of professionalism.”
Lucas forked some cake into his mouth, apparently less freaked out by this then we were, although Lily was happily eating her way through my portion of the cake too. She hesitated when she saw me glance over, her fork in front of her lips, and looked down at the remaining cake. “Want some?” she asked.
“No, no, you go right ahead.” I stared at the screen, thinking. “So we possibly have a hitwoman already in town, ready to serve as cleanup if anything goes wrong. Why not just have her do the job? Why not just have her infiltrate the safe house and kill everyone?”
“Lots of people to kill for one woman in such a small space,” said Lucas. “Kinda risky, don’t ya think?”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that,” I said, my mind whirring. “Pros don’t want to get caught. But this crime needed a fall guy to take the hit, lifting all suspicion off anyone else. That guy’s now Daniel, but was it always meant to be him? It strikes me that this hit was bungled from start to finish. The drugs failed to work efficiently. Daniel escaped, Detective Wayne survived. They’ve taken care of one so... oh, no...”
“So now, they’ll try and kill Daniel,” finished Lucas.
“Yeah,” I said, gulping.
“Maybe it’s a good thing no one knows where he is,” said Lily. “Assuming he’s not injured. Has anyone checked Montgomery General for another John Doe?”
“He’s not there,” I assured her. “The hitwoman knew that.”
“Of course. You would have checked already.” Lily forked the last bit of the cake into her mouth and chewed it, looking forlorn. I badly wanted to tell her Daniel was out of danger but I kept my mouth shut. I was too obsessed by the horrible idea that if we didn’t keep Daniel safe, someone might show up to finish the job.
“But this hitwoman already left town,” I pointed out. “It’s unlikely she’ll come back. There’ll be a major manhunt for her.”
“Womanhunt,” said Lily. “It’s not a word yet but it should be.”
“What if there’s more than one hitwoman, or hitman, already here?” asked Lucas.
“I’m still surprised that even one hitwoman was so close by. That makes me think we shouldn’t underestimate the reach of whoever is behind this.”
“We should call Solomon,” said Lucas.
“And Garrett,” I added.
“And Jord,” said Lily. “I’ve got that one covered.”